Shiara. Taken, condemned to torment and death, and a legion of maniacs in between.
“I’m coming,” said Cassica to the empty building, and she set off back toward the Interceptor.
Cassica crouched behind a burned-out car, heart thumping hard, breaths shallow and rapid like a frightened bird’s. The metal table leg, her makeshift weapon, gave her no comfort. In the cockpit she was fearless, but not outside. The terror of discovery was such that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to move when the time came.
Ahead of her, a high wall surrounded the forecourt of a drab, crumbling building. It was a dull anvil of a place, low and wide with dark square windows in regular rows along its length. Once, it had been an administrative headquarters, or perhaps a hospital, built from gray stone in the days before they made everything out of glass and steel. Now the Howlers had it.
It hadn’t been hard to follow their trail from the ambush point once she’d established that Shiara had been taken from the wrecked Interceptor. Howler gangs were not known for their stealth, and it was a mere two blocks to their base. The way was marked with graffiti, littered with fresh trash, and the road had been conspicuously cleared of vehicles so that they cluttered the sidewalks instead.
Cassica had used the vehicles for cover, her senses straining as she crept along, shrinking whenever she heard a shriek echoing through the streets. Once, she was forced to hide as a car, bristling with spikes and decorated with skulls, sped by. Soon after, she had to detour through a rusty playground to avoid a pair of Howlers engaged in a snarling argument in a language she didn’t recognize.
Now she’d reached the hideout, and when she did, she found the entrance open and apparently unguarded.
It was worse than if there had been guards. The threat of the unseen, the suspicion of a trap kept her paralyzed. The original gate was gone, and all that was left was a gap in the wall. Through it, she could see cars and small trucks haphazardly parked all over the weedy forecourt. The occasional Howler wandered about in a skatch-addled daze, but there seemed to be no organized defense at all. Perhaps they believed they had nothing to fear, or perhaps they were too fractious and wild for discipline.
Cassica watched and waited until she dared watch and wait no longer. When she was sure there were no Howlers in sight, she took a few panting breaths to psych herself up, then broke cover and ran to the gate.
She stopped at the corner and peered around, gripping the table leg tight in both hands. Parked on the other side of the wall was a bus, its flank plated with welded iron. That was how they sealed their base: they merely drove it forward a dozen yards to barricade the entrance when needed. Beyond, in the forecourt, she counted three Howlers. Two were listless, drifting; the other was walking purposefully toward the building.
Her skin crawled. Surely, if she moved, they’d see her? And surely someone would see her if she didn’t.
Fear of what was behind drove her onward. She scampered into the forecourt and scrambled under the bus.
Pressed flat in the dirt, she listened to the pulse in her ears. Where were the screams, the cries of the hunters as they sighted prey? They didn’t come. After a time, she dared to crawl along the length of the bus to its rear. She looked out, but all she saw from this low angle were parked cars.
Bunching up her courage like a fist, she told herself to move. She slithered out, belly to the ground, then got to her feet and ran in a crouch. She took shelter behind a flatbed truck, putting it between her and the Howlers.
Again, no screams of outrage, no hunting calls. She swallowed against the pain in her throat and ran again.
In this way, she skirted the edge of the forecourt and made her way close to the building. As she neared, she was surprised by a sudden shriek, and the shock almost made her shriek herself; but it wasn’t meant for her—it was just the random cry of the deranged.
She searched frantically for its source. One of them was nearby, lurching and staggering past on the other side of the car she hid behind. She spotted him through the grubby windows: a horrible, ragged shred of a man, ropes of tangled hair hanging over his eyes. He moaned and twitched, caught in a web of dreams and nightmares from which he’d never wake.
Cassica had seen Howlers a few times when she was younger. They sometimes ventured out of the Rust Bowl when they needed repairs at Blane’s auto shop. She’d thought them unpredictable, edgy, and dangerous; but in fact they were the least wild, junior members of the gang sent to deal with the outside world. Skatch was a kind of moonshine brewed from the roots of the skatch bush, a mutant plant that grew in the wastelands left after the Omniwar. It provoked wild and vivid visions, but it ate away at the mind until, with time, fantasy replaced reality. Long-term users were left on a seesaw teetering between bliss and rage. The Howlers embraced the chaos, choosing short lives of violence and delirious joy over the grind of daily living, but in the end they all lost their minds.
She hunkered down and let him pass, listening to his shuffling footsteps as he moved away. When she felt it was safe, she lifted her head and looked again. He was heading off; the danger had abated for now.
Through the window, she caught sight of something inside the car. Hanging from the ignition was a preserved human finger, dry and brown like jerky. At first she was disgusted, but then she realized it was hanging from a key ring. There was a key in the ignition.
She ran her gaze over the vehicle she hid behind. Until now, it had been merely cover. Now it was a car, armored with riveted metal sheets, its windows protected by grids. Filthy but sturdy-looking, and the tires were full.
A treacherous thought came to her. Get in. Drive. You had a two-hour lead. You could still be a contender. You could still win the race. If you get in now.
She caught herself. No. The plan was to rescue Shiara, sneak them both out to safety, and press the rescue alarm to get them picked up. No more risks. The race was over. Shiara was what was important.
But just in case, she quietly opened the car door and pulled the key from its slot. Grimacing, she slid it from its grotesque key ring and put it in a pocket of her driving leathers.
Just in case.
An open fire door let her inside. She found herself in hot, sunlit corridors littered with flaked plaster, tattered plastic bags, and empty soda cans. The building smelled of rodent droppings, sweat, and neglect. She passed broken skatch bottles, a battered shoe, an old bloodstain so large its donor couldn’t have survived it. The squeals and mutters of the Howlers rang from the walls, deeper within.
She snuck onward, clutching the table leg, ready to use it if need be. She wasn’t convinced of its worth.
“Hello?”
The voice came from down the corridor. A man’s voice, a sane voice, though it sounded oddly flat and dead.
“Hello? Are you there?”
Her heart jumped. Could he hear her? “Hello? Come in!”
She cringed. He was making so much noise. Come in where? Up ahead, there was an open doorway on her left. The voice seemed to issue from there.
“Come in, come in.”
A crackle of static, and something in the way he said it, made her realize: the voice was coming from a speaker. A walkie-talkie or a ham radio. She let out a shaky breath. So she hadn’t been seen after all.
And yet there was the voice on the radio. Maybe she could talk to him. Maybe she could call for help.
She moved quietly down the corridor. The voice would draw Howlers, perhaps, but it drew her too. A voice from outside this madness. Comforting and somehow familiar.
She was almost at the doorway when the voice came again. “Is anybody ther—”
“I’m here.”
The new voice froze her in her tracks. She pressed up against the wall, eyes wide. She wanted to flee, but she didn’t dare. There was someone in the room. Another moment and she would have stepped into the doorway.
“Where’ve you been?” demanded the voice on the radio.
“I been here,” came the lazy re
ply. The Howler’s voice was deep and smoky, a voice for starting bar brawls.
“You found the other girl yet?”
“They out there lookin’, man. Most everyone out there lookin’,” said the Howler. “So how ’bout you gimme a clue where she’s at?”
“I told you, she smashed the damn hovercam and she’s not wearing her helmet. We don’t know where she is!”
Disbelief and dread settled on Cassica like a numbing shroud. It wasn’t possible. Someone was helping the Howlers. Someone had set them up.
This wasn’t sport. This was murder.
“What you care anyway, man?” the Howler asked. “She out of the race. You said yourself you made it so their rescue alarms don’ work. So why don’ you leave her to us?”
Cassica felt sick. Their alarms. Their way out. One way or another, they’d been sabotaged. They were trapped here.
“It’s imperative that neither of them make it out. The man doesn’t want anyone talking about this. There’s too much at stake!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I got here four crates of the best skatch in Pacifica. You want it, you be sure you get both those girls.”
The man on the radio was nervous, talking rapidly. Did she know that voice? It was hard to tell—the speaker made his voice dull and buzzy—but there was something in the rhythm of his words …
“What have you done with the one you caught?” he asked.
“You don’ wanna say her name no more?”
A hateful silence on the other end. Then: “Shiara. Where’s Shiara?”
“She down in the basement. Might need her as a lure if we can’t root the other out. Stake her out in the street, do this ’n’ that till she sings. See if her friend stays hidin’ when they can hear her screamin’ down the block.”
The basement! That was the spur to move her. She crept off, back the way she came, toward a junction in the corridor that would let her take another route around. All she had to do was find some stairs down, find Shiara, get her out. That was as far ahead as she could imagine now. After that, she didn’t know.
As she made her way on silent feet, the unseen men kept talking. She heard their final exchange just as she reached the corner.
“Alright,” said the man on the radio. “I’ll call back in an hour or so. You better have news.”
“Don’ worry, Harlan. I’ll be here.”
Cassica stopped, looked back over her shoulder. Bleak-eyed and aghast. The name dropped on her like a stone; the weight of his betrayal made her weak.
Harlan.
Their own manager. The man whose fingers they were trying to save. The man who got them in such a mess in the first place.
Harlan.
She gritted her teeth against the tears of rage and frustration, then turned the corner and was gone.
Shiara had fixed all kinds of machines in her day, from washing machines to gas generators. She’d mastered the complex interplay of parts that made up combustion engines, brake systems, nitrous oxide injection arrays. All that, and yet the thing that was going to get her killed was a simple pin-and-tumbler lock on a pair of handcuffs.
She knelt on the floor of a concrete room, wrists shackled to a heavy iron radiator, her body aching in a dozen places. Broken furniture and a moldy bedroll lay among the dust and fallen plaster. Near the doorway, leaning back in his chair, was a Howler, a shaggy heap of a man with an oil-stained face. Next to him a shotgun leaned against the wall, and nearby, a recently emptied bottle of skatch. The Howler’s eyes were on the ceiling, where his delirium showed him fascinating things invisible to Shiara.
She took advantage of his distraction to work her wrists against the cuffs, to test the radiator for weak spots. She searched for something to pick the lock with. In her heart she knew it was hopeless, but she hoped anyway. The alternative was admitting she was going to die.
Just thinking it, she felt the cold thrashing of panic and wanted to scream.
It couldn’t happen to her. It was beyond imagination. Somehow she’d get free. She’d dislocate the bones in her wrist and get her hands through the cuffs. She’d save herself. Somehow.
The thought that someone else might save her never entered her head. She didn’t expect help from the Maximum Racing officials—she’d seen how they treated their racers—and as for Cassica, not a chance. It had always been Shiara who’d been there for Cassica, not the other way around.
She couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry at Cassica for running out on her. Rather, it was resignation she felt. No sense both of them dying; leaving had been the smart thing to do. Perhaps, her whole life, she’d been waiting for the moment when Cassica would abandon her for good. Cassica was too fast for her, too flighty, too full of fierce life. Some part of Shiara wanted to be like her, but since she couldn’t, being near her was the next best thing. It couldn’t last, though. It was inevitable that Cassica would move on in the end, find someone new to protect her from herself.
At least, that was what she’d always thought. But then, through the doorway, Shiara saw her.
She came creeping into sight in the corridor, nervous and bedraggled like some mangy fox. She peered into the room, eyes widening as they found Shiara’s. And in that moment Shiara felt a connection reestablished, like the closing of a circuit breaker. Life and joy and the possibility of a future surged into her. She couldn’t believe she’d ever doubted her friend.
Cassica opened her mouth to speak; Shiara shook her head frantically. She gestured with her eyes at the Howler sitting just inside the door, out of Cassica’s sight. Cassica dithered in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. She was holding a length of metal as a weapon, but Shiara didn’t trust her to put down a Howler that big.
The Howler lost interest in whatever he saw on the ceiling. His head lolled forward and he fixed his bleary attention on Shiara. A grin stretched his lips.
“Gonna enjoy killin’ you,” he said, voice drowsy with skatch. “Kill you slow.”
Suddenly, an idea came to her. A plan, half thought through. “Yeah?” she said. “Come here and try it.”
The Howler was surprised and confused by the tone in her voice. She faked as much aggression as she could, shook the manacles noisily. “Come and have a go, see what happens,” she snarled.
He lifted himself up from his seat, staring at her like she was some curious errant puppy, yapping at him.
“I said come on!” She swung a hopeless kick at him from the floor, though he was far out of reach.
The anger in her voice sparked anger in him. He lumbered over to her, his grin replaced with gritted teeth, joy turned to fury. She writhed away from him as he grabbed at her clumsily, trying to hold her down. She kicked away a clutching hand; he recoiled from her, kicked her in response, slamming a boot into her thigh. She gasped in agony as her leg went dead.
“Get off her!”
Cassica’s order drew the Howler up short. He swung around and saw Cassica holding the shotgun he’d left by the doorway. She held it uncertainly, pointed at his chest.
“Take off her handcuffs,” Cassica said. But there was a tremble in her voice.
The Howler lunged at her. Startled, Cassica squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bellowed. Shiara flinched away and closed her eyes as hot blood spattered her cheek.
When she opened them again, Cassica was standing there shocked, and the Howler was on the ground, dead.
“He just ran at me,” Cassica said weakly.
“Get the keys off him!” Shiara told her. The sound of the shotgun would bring the Howlers running. Already she could hear their shrieks rising in volume. “The keys!” she snapped when the first time didn’t penetrate.
Cassica moved then. She dropped to her knees and dug in the Howler’s pockets, averting her eyes from his face and the wound in his chest, until she found the keys. As soon as Shiara was out of the handcuffs, she got to her feet and pulled Cassica up with her.
“They’re comin’. You got a way out?”
r /> Cassica stared at her blankly for a moment before something clicked. She pulled out a car key from her pocket and held it up.
Shiara slapped her on the shoulder. “Smart thinkin’. Lead on.”
The yammering and wailing of the Howlers echoed in their ears as they fled through the building. The alarm had been raised, and booted feet pounded the corridors. It was hard to tell if there were a dozen or five times that: the racket they kicked up made them sound like a horde. Cassica and Shiara darted past dim rooms with stained mattresses laid amid the debris. Twice they changed direction when they heard someone coming the other way. But whether there were few Howlers or many, they made it outside without being seen.
The forecourt wavered like a mirage in the oppressive heat of the day. Howlers were out there, stirred up by the clamor, cavorting like demons in the scorching yellow sunlight. They ran crazily between the cars and trucks, waving their knives. Shiara reckoned most of them didn’t even know the reason why they were excited; like a pack of animals, any alarm was trigger enough.
“Which one?” she asked Cassica. Shiara was the calm one now. Cassica needed her strength; she knew it by the wild look in her friend’s eyes.
Cassica pointed to the car. Mercifully, it was on the edge of the forecourt, near to them. They scampered toward it and reached it unseen. Shiara pulled open the door.
“You drive,” she said, because that was how it had always been. Cassica drove; Shiara did the rest. And together, only together, it worked.
Cassica clambered over to the driver’s seat, keeping low, and threw the shotgun in the back. Shiara slipped in after, shutting the door behind her.
Cassica put the key in the ignition. Just as she was about to turn it, Shiara stopped her hand.
“Thanks,” said Shiara, because she had to say it. Because if all this went wrong, she wanted her friend to know. And though that word was pitifully inadequate, though it said nothing of the pride and gratitude she felt toward Cassica, the relief and joy of seeing her, she had no better word to give.
Cassica held her gaze, and Shiara knew she’d understood. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”